Don't Limit Choice in Meat Packaging

Don't limit choice in meat packaging:
FDA should only heed evidence of risk

Rocky Mountain News: Editorial
March 16, 2006

Excerpt...

Who's afraid of a little carbon monoxide? Consumer groups and a food-additive maker fretting over its bottom line, that's who - and their complaints could have steak lovers seeing red.

There's no credible link between injecting trace levels of carbon monoxide into beef and fish packages and health threats to the meat-eating public. Without that evidence, federal regulators should let the practice move forward.

Food packagers have used other gases - oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, for example - in "modified atmospheric processing" to preserve (and make safer) salads, coffee, pasta, bottled water and fish for decades. Carbon monoxide (CO) enhancement poses no unique dangers.

And yet Kalsec, a Michigan-based additive maker, and the Consumer Federation of America want the Food and Drug Administration to ban CO enhancement, saying the agency hasn't subjected the process to proper testing.

The FDA approved CO as an enhancer in 2004. Injecting CO allows "case-ready" fresh steaks and roasts to be packaged at the slaughterhouse rather than the supermarket. The markets can then hire fewer on-site butchers to keep the coolers stocked, which could restrain prices.

In a sealed package, CO-enhanced beef can maintain its reddish hue even if it's been left on a counter for days and not refrigerated...

...The thing is, much like spoiled milk, rancid meat stinks - and CO enhancement does not eradicate the odor. No less important, all fresh meat and fish continue to list expiration dates and proper handling instructions, including warnings about inadequate refrigeration. Consumers who follow the labels should be fine.

It turns out that Kalsec licenses a process to use gas modification (namely, oxygen) to preserve meats. So why the company's protest? Because last year, Kalsec's biggest customer - Tyson Foods - started preserving its meats with a CO-based system. After losing its contract with Tyson, Kalsec asked Washington to put its competitors out of business.

So-called consumer activists aren't credible critics, either, since many object even to recent life-saving technological advances in food processing such as irradiation.

Wider choices and greater selection aid consumers. No one will have to buy meat in a CO package because some consumers won't want to and retailers will heed their desires. But banning harmless technologies is no way to serve consumers, either.